10 Geopolitical / Financial Risks to the Global Economy

By Charles Hugh Smith Perhaps the most apt metaphor to describe the decade ahead is that…

The Glue Binding Democracy and a Free Economy Has Melted

By Charles Hugh Smith And that’s how democracy and a free economy die. An astute reader…

Prepare for the Repricing of Risk Globally

By Charles Hugh Smith The past 24 years can be viewed as an era in which…

Financial Nihilism and the Collapsing American Dream

By Charles Hugh Smith Following the conventional path is a deadend. It isn’t easy to carve…

Our Crisis of Competence

By Charles Hugh Smith If this is what passes for competence while we cheerlead “the Roaring…

The $150,000 Housekeeper: Wage Inflation Kicks Into Second Gear

By Charles Hugh Smith One of the lesser known manifestations of the inflationary crisis in early-1920s…

Is Anyone Else’s Life as Stupidly Complicated by Digital “Shadow Work” as Mine Is?

By Charles Hugh Smith We seem to have entered a world of anti-leisure and anti-productivity in…

Maybe We’re Closer to “You’ll Own Nothing” Than We Realize

By Charles Hugh Smith Maybe we should rephrase the slogan to “you’ll appear to own things…

Squeezed for Decades, America’s Working Class Is Finally Up Against the Wall

By Charles Hugh Smith The net result is America’s working class is up against the wall,…

What Orwell and Huxley Got Wrong and Kafka Got Right

By Charles Hugh Smith What Kafka got right is how societies can become busily dysfunctional. For…

If AI Is So Great, Why Is Managing the Digital Realm Eating Us Alive?

By Charles Hugh Smith The financial analysts gloating over the prospect of higher corporate profits resulting…

How to Navigate Our Low-Trust, Increasingly Dysfunctional Society and Economy

By Charles Hugh Smith Politicians and corporate managers have an enviable record of self-enrichment but very…

The Fed’s Empire of Speculation and the Echoes of 1929

By Charles Hugh Smith Speculation has its own expiration dynamics, and they don’t depend on us…

Irony Alert: The American Dream Is Only Affordable Overseas

By Charles Hugh Smith This is not to suggest living/working overseas is a panacea or easy–it…

What’s It Take To Be Middle Class Now?

By Charles Hugh Smith Can an economy in which 10% of the households qualify as middle…